Lettuce eat lettuce

Always eat your greens!

  • 2 Posts
  • 104 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • IP white lists and firewall exceptions will help, but exposing ports on your home router is almost always a bad idea, especially for something as trivial as a game server.

    I would highly recommend Tailscale. It’s free for up to 3 users, and if you have more friends than that, I would have them all sign up with free accounts and then share your laptop device with their tailnets.

    It’s very easy to setup and use, costs nothing, and will be far more secure than opening ports and trying to set up IP white lists, protocol limitations, etc.

    Tailscale creates something called an “overlay network” it’s basically a virtual LAN that exists on top of your real network and can be extended to other people and devices over the internet. It’s fully encrypted, fast, and like I said, very easy to set up.






  • Performance and how configurable things are, plus ease of use.

    For instance, my default router/modem device from my ISP was super clunky and confusing. I needed to set up some custom port forwarding and firewall rules. The aftermarket router I bought was faster, had way better wireless coverage, and the UI was so much easier to set up the configs I needed.

    So it’s up to you, from what you said, seems like you probably would be good with the default from your ISP.






  • This is kind of like asking, “what is water worth?”

    To an upper middle class person in the developed world, a dollar or two. To a person stranded in a desert, they might literally kill for it.

    If you are just a Joe shmoe out in the world living a basic life, privacy might not be worth hardly anything. But if you’re a whistle blower or a political dissident in an authoritarian country, your privacy is worth everything.


  • First off, good on you for being careful. Ultimately, use the same methods that you would use when vetting other sources, like academic or personnel for hiring.

    Check reputation via stars, active contributors, see what accounts are contributing and what other projects they also contribute to. Check their LinkedIn profile and personal websites.

    See if you can confirm the project is being used safely by reputable groups. See if people, especially public people you trust are using/recommending it without being sponsored.

    Check in private forums with other devs and users, see what people are saying. Check the code yourself, etc.

    Ultimately, there’s no way to know 100%, even large companies and organizations have been duped in the past by backdoors or security bugs in OSS they use. You can be very confident however, it’s all about how much investigation you are interested in doing.

    And of course, don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket.

    And if after lots of investigation, you still have a bad feeling in your gut, listen to that. Better to be a little too careful than to compromise yourself by ignoring that gut feeling that something just doesn’t pass the smell test.



  • Piracy is a great example of a topic where legality and morality aren’t the same.

    Those kinds of topics are incredibly valuable teaching moments for children.

    I would teach them when they are mature enough. Help them understand why some people think it is wrong, when/why you think it is acceptable, and how to do it safely.

    You can teach them the difference between actual theft and copying. Explain how piracy has benefited humanity as a whole, explain why knowledge and cultural experiences shouldn’t be gate kept by mega-corps from underprivileged people.

    There are so many valuable lessons that you as parents could pass on to your kids through the topic of piracy.

    And as every major platform enshitifies and information of all kinds gets locked behind more paywalls, piracy will become a more and more important skill to have.